Bob Cleek

Well, I think the main reason people don't add "in my opinion" disclaimers to their answers to direct questions is because they realize nobody's much interested in anybody else's opinion. Facts, yes. Opinions, no. Everybody already has opinions. They don't need any more. If somebody disagrees with someone else's statement of fact, they are free to offer evidence to the contrary, and should. That's the problem with the internet. Any fool can pontificate about anything they know nothing about and most do. (Can you say, "herd immunity?")
 
For example:
 
1. "CA is the best choice for planking a hull using Chuck’s method." That's an opinion. It needs facts to back it up. The majority of people who've used CA are adverse to its use for many sound reasons beginning with the difficulty of working with it, the fact that it soaks into wood and affects subsequent finishing results, it is not a recognized archival material, has a relatively short "working time" before it sets up, is much more difficult to un-bond than PVA, has a relatively short shelf life and a relatively high price, and so on. Your mileage may vary. At the end of the day, "best practices" dictate that all parts of a model to the extent possible should be mechanically fastened, not just glued, anyway. 
 
2.  "I have models over 25 years old done with CA that are just fine and look great." The fact that you have models done with CA that are over 25 years old is a fact. That they are just fine and look great is an opinion, or, at best, an unproven fact. It's too early to call. Let us know how they are holding up in another 75 years. The "industry standard" is a model that properly cared for should last 100 years without exhibiting any deterioration. At present, CA hasn't been around long enough to know if it lasts that well.
 
3.  "I don’t think any well built ship model survives dropping to the floor, it’s best not to do that." Now, that's a fact. Don't ask me how I know this.
 
3. (Again) "Edge gluing is not only totally unnecessary it’s also detrimental to the look of the hull." That's a fact, not an opinion. 
 
4.   "I doubt the humidity variance in most first world homes creates an issue."  Whether it does or doesn't depends upon many variables in every instance, but "first world homes" isn't one of them.   It's a fact that humidity is a factor to be considered in any fine woodworking. Frolich addresses a substantial problem he encountered with wood shrinkage in his fine book, The Art of Ship Modeling. One ignores it at their peril. It's sort of like Covid in that respect. 
 
5.  I’ll put up my nine models as examples of using CA for hulls any time." Not to worry. I don't think anybody doubts you built them with CA adhesive and they are still sticking together. See No. 2. above.
 
Many don't offer what they have to say as "just their opinion" because they have little interest in expressing their opinions. They are only interested in sharing what they know to be true. If somebody prefers to offer opinions, they should go to FaceBook.   Preferences are largely irrelevant. There's a right way and a wrong way to do most things, and then there are "preferences," which, more often than not are just excuses for doing it the wrong way.  My wife insists that loading a toilet paper roll so the paper end hangs down the back of the roll, between the roll and the wall, instead of off the front of the roll like you've probably seen in every hotel you've ever been in, is her "preference." She was not convinced when I showed her the original patent for the toilet paper roll which clearly shows the roll coming off the front and not the back. That's obviously the way it's supposed to work. So, she has her own "preference," and i have my own bathroom.  

Yes, that is a good observation. However, there are many MSW forumites who are greatly lacking in nautical nomenclature fluency. The world of ships and the sea has its own language and it's different for every commonly spoken language in the world. Even when the spoken language is the same, the nautical nomenclature may differ in different areas, just as the words "bonnet" and "hood" refer to the same part of an automobile in Britain and the US respectively, while a "bonnet" and a "hood" don't both refer to the same item of headgear in both Britain and the US.  And this confusion is compounded when one tries to translate "nauticalese" from  an entirely foreign language, often making the understanding of instructions for the building of model kits imported from places where a different language is spoken quite a challenge, even for the fluent "nautical" speaker in his own language, let alone one who is not.
 
As one who had the benefit of growing up with maritime nomenclature "as a first language," being involved as both an amateur and a professional with ships and the sea all my life, having a father who worked in the industry as well, it is often apparent to me when forum posters "do not speak the language." Unfortunately, there's no "google translate" for nautical nomenclature, nor language school that teaches it, as far as I know. It can only be learned by "immersion," an apt metaphor for "sink or swim." I can't imagine the difficulty a new ship model builder from Kansas or Oklahoma who's never seen the ocean must have trying to build a sailing ship model! (Parenthetically, I've seen some highly skilled modelers who are distinguished by their careful research nevertheless make glaring errors in a model, particularly in things like rigging, because they obviously have no experience sailing vessels similar to the one they are modeling.*) To do so with that handicap is quite an accomplishment! I will say that any ship modeler who is contemplating investing in books related to the hobby would do well to make one of their initial library acquisitions a very good maritime dictionary and keep it at hand at all times. (My top recommendation in that regard would be The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea.) The use of such a dictionary will go a long way in making their forum posts more understandable and, thus, encourage more helpful responses.
 
 
 
*Example:
 
This Model Shipways 18th Century Longboat kit is built in complete conformance with the kit's instructions and, I have it on good authority, is an exact "model of a contemporary model" in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, England.
 
Who can spot what's wrong with it first? 
 
(Hint: It's something that should be immediately obvious to any sailor.)
 
     

Let's call a spade a spade. The search engine feature of the MSW forum platform is inadequate to address the complexity of the forum's content as well as one would expect based on experience with much more sophisticated search engines like Google, etc. (The development of these "AI-heavy" search engines is driven by their great profitability as "data mining" platforms.) This is true of most every forum search engine I've ever used.
 
There is a "hack" for this problem, however. The trick is to search the MSW forum using a more powerful search engine than the MSW one.
 
The problem:
 
For example, "drifter steam capstan," using the quotations marks to indicate the full phrase, entered in the MSW search engine yields "There were no results for your search."  Entering drifter steam capstan as separate words in the MSW search engine gets you the same "no results" response. Entering "steam capstan" will get you a fair number of results for the use of the term in the forum. Entering steam capstan as separate words rather than a phrase yields three pages of results for steam, steamer, steamboat, and capstan.
 
The hack:
 
Go to a search engine like Google and enter a search for your terms occurring in the MSW forum in the following manner:
 
"drifter steam capstan" + Modelshipworld
 
Google will tell you that there's no result found for the phrase drifter steam capstan in MSW, but it will alternately provide you with "results for drifter steam capstan + Modelshiipworld" (no quotation marks.) You can review those results and, by reading their website sources, see a much more focused set of results than the MSW forum search engine provides. 
 
The first result is:
The next is:
From all indications, these two results are as close as one can get and quickly accessible without wading through useless results
 
 

Excellent point! It addresses a shortcoming of internet forums: Everybody has a soapbox, but some have a lot more to say than others do.  Forums are like good restaurants: Once they are discovered, they often tend to begin to decline in quality. The reason there are so many highly accomplished and experienced modelers on this forum, aside from its association with the Nautical Research Guild, is because they seek out each other and the rest of us are lucky to be able to look over their shoulders. They are here and make MSW what it is because this is where they can continue to learn from those who are playing the game at their level.  When a forum becomes inundated with "newbies," the "level of play" naturally drops and the "high achievers" find it increasingly less worth their while and drift off.
 
Learning is an exercise best done with the eyes open and the mouth closed, (although in my case clearly more so of the former than the latter.) The most useful learning tool of all it the search engine. Notwithstanding that most of the forum platform software packaged search engines are disappointing in the performance when compared with stand-alone search engines such as Google and Bing, they still remain the best way to look up something specific within a given forum. Given the size and age of MSW forum, there is a very high likelihood that most any question one might encounter in the course of building a ship model, excepting really esoteric historical minutia, will have been addressed, often at length, before. It's poor internet forum manners to ask others to answer a question before having exhausted your own efforts to find the answer on your own. Don't expect others to become your "information codependents." Everybody soon tires of a forum that requires hours of wasted time "separating the fly poop from the pepper" (like that other ship modeling forum we all know.) The very basic questions "newbies" ask over and over again have all been asked before. While I encourage and welcome beginners, I must confess that I rarely am moved to devote my time to answering a question they could have found themselves using the search engine.
 
To the original poster who bemoaned the lack of responses to his build log, and to the management of the forum which encourages "build logging" and "newbies" to the hobby (and we all should,) I express my sympathy. On the one hand, build logs are a valuable feature of the forum, if not its heart and soul, but on the other hand, the "build logger" has to understand that he is competing with all the other build logs for attention and it's a jungle out there. If you are new to the hobby and are posting the seventeenth active build log of a popular kit model, your build log isn't going to generate the same amount of interest as the scratch-built masterpiece of one of the published "Superstars of Ship Modeling." I'm not knocking kits by a long shot, but they are ship modeling's "gateway drug." There is an inevitable progression, at rates varying as to the individual, from building kits to "The Dark Side" of scratch-building. No two ways about it, there is far more to learn from following the scratch-build of a never-before- modeled prototype. Don't feel discouraged starting out. Learning to crawl is just as much an accomplishment as learning to walk. 

Thanks for the tip! I'll pass on the premixed hide glue.
 
Strongly agree on the drawbacks of PVA adhesives acidity, as does the National Park Service in their conservation standards. (See: https://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/18-02.pdf )  I've repaired "lead bloom" issues by providing case ventilation and it seems to have worked, for the last 20 years or so, at least. At present, short of real hide glue, PVA adhesive seems to be a necessary evil. I expect minimizing PVA to small amounts used in model construction serves to minimize the problem. For that reason, I use clear shellac for stiffening lines and sail material, not thinned PVA adhesive. Case ventilation is essential and not just for lead oxidation prevention. The acid from whatever source slowly deteriorates everything, particularly fiber rigging and sail material.
 
While on the subject of acidic outgassing and display cases,  based on the professional literature, I only use UV-sheilding picture frame glass for display cases and avoid all plastics in case construction at all costs due to their potential acidic outgassing characteristics. High quality plastic glazing materials (e.g. Perspex, Plexiglas, Lucite) are reportedly inert, but I'm not taking any chances that what I'm getting is "the good stuff." (Besides, as a matter of taste, I prefer the more traditional look of a wooden or metal framed glass case.) (See: https://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/08-05.pdf ; See also: https://ccaha.org/resources/selecting-materials-storage-and-display )

Yes, old fashioned hide glue is a great adhesive, but it does demand clamping and it has to be mixed and kept heated in a glue pot. It doesn't have any shelf life once it's mixed, as far as I know. I'm told it's aroma is highly disagreeable, as well. It's the gold standard for fine furniture builders and restorers, though. Interestingly, Titebond has invented what they claim is a true hide glue in premixed liquid form that does not require heating. The next time I have to pick up some glue, I plan to try it. http://www.titebond.com/product/glues/9e9995b4-08eb-4fc6-8254-c47daa20f8ed
 
I agree completely with your conclusions regarding CA. Its shelf life can be extended if you store it in the freezer when not in use, though. I do keep some on hand for repairing broken ceramics and such, but not for model building at all. 
 
Agreed with respect to wipe-on poly, too. This may be an "opinion," but, even applied very thinly, there's no way to overcome the "plastic" look of the stuff, to my eye, at least. Perhaps that can be improved by fine sanding it out, but there's nothing I know that will duplicate the finish of real oil-based paint, varnish, or shellac that's been properly applied and, if desired, hand-rubbed with rottenstone and pumice. I don't think a lot of people have had the pleasure of running their fingertips over a hand-rubbed finish these days. 
 
(PS: In reading Titebond's product literature, it appears that use of water-based paints over hide glue may be inadvisable. See: http://www.titebond.com/App_Static/literature/glues/Crackling.pdf)

If I state something that sounds like a fact, like the percentage of wood movement, you can take it to the bank. I don't write stuff like that without checking with authoritative sources. Anything else is an opinion. 
 
As mentioned, The Wood Database on line is very complete and useful. See: https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/dimensional-shrinkage/  The federal government's publications are very helpful. You will find just about anything you want in the out-of-print and highly collectable (an hence expensive) Wood: A Manual for Its Use as a Shipbuilding Material, by the US Navy Bureau of Ships and the US Forest Products Laboratory  (1945) Fortunately, it's now available for free on line.  https://books.google.com/booksid=4LosAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Also How Wood Shrinks and Swells by the US Forest Products Laboratory contains an extensive spread sheet of the shrinkage factors of every wood under the sun. https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf1957/peck57a.pdf
 
The Workshop Companion has a lot of quickly accessible information: http://workshopcompanion.com/KnowHow/Design/Nature_of_Wood/2_Wood_Movement/2_Wood_Movement.htm
 
Note that the Workshop Companion offers a rule of thumb that if a board shows mostly flat grain on its face, you should allow for 1/4" total wood movement for every 12 inches across the grain, which "will accommodate an annual change of 8 percent moisture content, much more than is common in most areas."
 
How much your house changes shape with changes in humidity is a function of many factors, primarily depending upon the species of wood, its grain orientation when milled, and the direction in which it is oriented in the construction matrix. The articles above will explain it all in greater detail. You are absolutely correct, though, that one of the primary observable symptoms of wood movement in a house is the doors sticking in the summer when the humidity tends to be higher. 

Scrubby
 
The best way to square the fence is with a dial indicator if you have one or have access to one. The first set of instructions is for an indicator. The second set is for the machinist square. 
 
Dial Indicator
1.  Remove the fence extension, four 4-40 cap screws located at the corners, use a 3/32 hex            wrench.

2.  Clamp indicator to miter or cut a piece of hard wood 1/2 by 6" so it fits in the miter slot nicely
    and fasten the indicator to the wood.

3.  Loosen the front four, 4-40 cap screws on the front of the fence bar with a 3/32 hex wrench.
   Do not loosen the back 2 screws.

4.  Slide the fence up against the indicator point until the indicator spins
   1 revolution and lock the front fence block with the brass thumbscrew.

5.  Reset the indicator bezel to "0"

6.  Slide the indicator down the fence as far as the blade center. Do not go
   past the blade center, the fence starts to taper at blade center.

7.  Tap the rear fence block until the indicator needle is back on "0"

8.  Snug the rear fence block brass thumbscrew.

9.  Recheck the fence with the indicator

10.  Adjust the rear block as necessary by tapping it with a soft mallet

11.  Recheck the fence with the indicator

12.  Lock the rear brass thumbscrew

13.  Recheck the fence

14.  Tighten the front 4 capscrews

15.  Recheck the fence

16.  Loosen the front and rear thumbscrews and slide the fence away from the
     indicator.

17.  Slide it back to the indicator and lock the front thumbscrew and recheck
     the fence
ALWAYS LOCK THE FRONT THUMBSCREW FIRST.
Machinist Square
 
1.  Remove the fence extension, four 4-40 cap screws located at the corners, use a 3/32 hex wrench.

2.   Loosen the front and rear brass thumb screws.
3.  Loosen the front four, 4-40 cap screws on the front of the fence bar with a 3/32 hex wrench.
   Do not loosen the back 2 screws.

4.  Place the machinist square up against the front of the table with the beam up against the fence.  Don't worry about the back of the fence not being up against the square,  it has a slight taper to it.  The fence starts tapering at the blade center.

5.   Snug the front and rear brass thumbscrew.  Always front first.
6.   Tighten the front four 4-40 cap screws

7.  Recheck the fence with the square.  If everything is square lock down the front 4-40 screws.  If not adjust the fence until it is square.
8.   Take a few test cuts on some scrap.

 ALWAYS LOCK THE FRONT THUMBSCREW FIRST.
 
regards
Jim
 
 
 

Just as a general observation, if one has problems with "gap filling" in their planking, that's God's way of telling you that you need to work on your planking skills. Now, I know we've all had a painted hull that we've slapped some filler on here or there, but the object of the game is to avoid the need to do that. 
 
Given present-day planking techniques, such as Chuck Passaro's "edge-setting" heat bending method, and a reasonable amount of care, there should be no reason why plank seams shouldn't be tight over their entire length. For that same reason, there should be no reason to "double plank" a hull. (Unless, of course, you're doing an "as built" model of a prototype double-planked hull.) Double planking was a kit manufacturers' gimmick to sell more models and not have to invest in expensive solid-hull carving machinery, IMHO. Today, I would urge any beginning modeler to first plank a kit model that has laser cut planks that are certain to fit before they tackle planking a model that requires its planks to be spiled and got out of whole stock. Tackling something like one of Syren Ship Models' longboat models as a first effort is much wiser than tackling a Seventeenth Century plank on bulkhead ship of the line!
 
 See: 
 
 

Application of penetrating epoxy sealer will retard the speed at which moisture is absorbed and will repel water soaking, but epoxy coatings are all moisture-permeable, contrary to common belief. There are many reasons why one hull might crack and another not, so I'd hesitate to certainly ascribe the lack of cracking to the epoxy. I'm not a fan of edge-gluing planking in any way because if there is going to be significant movement, and if the adhesive is any good at all, the wood will break before the glue line does.
 
According to scientific testing, one of the best moisture barriers available for application to wood is thin shellac (one or two pound cut.) It is very nearly moisture impermeable. It also soaks into soft wood species, hardening their surfaces and makes it possible to sand them very smooth without any "fuzzing." I make it a practice to coat all bare wood with thin clear shellac. It makes an excellent base for paint and also makes an excellent sealer for wood which is not painted.
 
It should be added that glue alone should not be relied upon if one expects a model to last well. Every pieced joined to another should be mechanically fastened, If one is interested in ensuring an archival-quality result, planks should be mechanically fastened with glued-in scale trunnels or wire pins. 
 
See: https://thenrg.org/resource/articles/specifications-for-construction

The good Mr. Mastini's book is a good enough primer for beginning builders of boat model kits, but it has its limitations, as do most of the kits on the market, with a few notable exceptions. Mastini's book is a good book for beginning kit builders, but a lot has changed in kits since it was written. At that time, double planked model hulls were quite popular. That is not as much the case with the better kits these days which benefit greatly from laser cutting technology. (And, for openers, planking a double-planked hull requires twice the work!)

One should carefully consider the downside risks of gluing planking seams, whether by application of adhesive to the seams, or by coating the inside of a hull with epoxy resin adhesive which soaks into the seams from inside. As noted correctly, wood moves with changes in the ambient humidity levels of the environment it's in. This movement is primarily across the grain and its amount varies depending upon the wood species and, within the same species, even the location where the wood is grown. This is called tangential movement. Most woods will shrink tangentially six to ten percent when dried and will swell back depending upon the moisture content absorbed. The amount of movement is relatively small, assuming properly dried wood being used to begin with, but can still be considerable if the distance you are dealing with is relatively large. 
 
So, if you are building a model using vertical grain stock, as one should, the tangential (cross grain) side of its planked hull can easily total six inches. That's six inches of grain to shrink tangentially and even at a rate of movement of one percent, you are getting close to a sixteenth of an inch, which would be a quite noticeable crack in a model's topsides. If the planks are not fastened to each other, each will shrink individually and if you have maybe 24 1/4" planks, that shrinkage will only amount to 1/24th of a sixteenth of an inch. (You can do the math to get an exact fraction... a good example of the advantages of metric measurements!) That amount of movement isn't going to be noticeable at all and most coatings will allow for such movement without cracking at the seams. However, if the seams are all glued together, they all move as one, and the "weakest link law" takes over. In that case, a sixteenth of an inch crack along the weakest glued seam... or a crack in the wood itself... is going to occur at the weakest point. Conversely, swelling will push the glued sheet of planking for that sixteenth of an inch against everything it butts up against, again potentially causing a structural failure at the weakest point, or tend to buckle the "planking sheet" outward, breaking the glue bonds... or the wood... at the frames. 
 
Now, with prime wood species which have low movement factors and with relatively stable humidity, you may not run into any problems at all, but theoretically, the potential is there and I've seen its results in more than one model I've restored. More often than not, parts, cap rails, for example, start popping off and nobody knows why.
 
Monocoque wood hull construction is tricky. For my money, I prefer to give the wood as much opportunity to move on its own as possible without concentrating swelling and shrinking stresses within the structure.
 
Others' mileage may vary, of course.
 

Yes, that is a good observation. However, there are many MSW forumites who are greatly lacking in nautical nomenclature fluency. The world of ships and the sea has its own language and it's different for every commonly spoken language in the world. Even when the spoken language is the same, the nautical nomenclature may differ in different areas, just as the words "bonnet" and "hood" refer to the same part of an automobile in Britain and the US respectively, while a "bonnet" and a "hood" don't both refer to the same item of headgear in both Britain and the US.  And this confusion is compounded when one tries to translate "nauticalese" from  an entirely foreign language, often making the understanding of instructions for the building of model kits imported from places where a different language is spoken quite a challenge, even for the fluent "nautical" speaker in his own language, let alone one who is not.
 
As one who had the benefit of growing up with maritime nomenclature "as a first language," being involved as both an amateur and a professional with ships and the sea all my life, having a father who worked in the industry as well, it is often apparent to me when forum posters "do not speak the language." Unfortunately, there's no "google translate" for nautical nomenclature, nor language school that teaches it, as far as I know. It can only be learned by "immersion," an apt metaphor for "sink or swim." I can't imagine the difficulty a new ship model builder from Kansas or Oklahoma who's never seen the ocean must have trying to build a sailing ship model! (Parenthetically, I've seen some highly skilled modelers who are distinguished by their careful research nevertheless make glaring errors in a model, particularly in things like rigging, because they obviously have no experience sailing vessels similar to the one they are modeling.*) To do so with that handicap is quite an accomplishment! I will say that any ship modeler who is contemplating investing in books related to the hobby would do well to make one of their initial library acquisitions a very good maritime dictionary and keep it at hand at all times. (My top recommendation in that regard would be The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea.) The use of such a dictionary will go a long way in making their forum posts more understandable and, thus, encourage more helpful responses.
 
 
 
*Example:
 
This Model Shipways 18th Century Longboat kit is built in complete conformance with the kit's instructions and, I have it on good authority, is an exact "model of a contemporary model" in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, England.
 
Who can spot what's wrong with it first? 
 
(Hint: It's something that should be immediately obvious to any sailor.)
 
     

The first is a staysail schooner with a boomed foresail, flying a fisherman topsail.
 
The second is a brigantine.
 
The third photograph isn't sufficiently clear to determine what we're looking at.  Unlike the other three photos, which are indisputable, this one's identity depends upon what's happening where the odd, long-sparred jib-headed sail meets the mast. Is it attached to the mast with gaff jaws, or is it crossing the mast as would a lateen antenna.  In the case of the former, it might be called gaff schooner with a weirdly long foresail gaff boom, and in the latter instance, a lateen-rigged ketch with a gaff-rigged mizzen. In the case of a lateen rig, it appears that the picture was taken while the foot of the mainsail antenna was being tacked from one side of the mast to the other. If the long boom is connected to the mast, it may have been a rig adaptation, similar to the arrangement seen on the Thames barges, which accommodated local fishing or cargo handling requirements.
 
The fourth is another staysail schooner.
 
The rest of you guys... That was pathetic. Go to your rooms!!!     
 
Thames barge:
 
 

The first is a staysail schooner with a boomed foresail, flying a fisherman topsail.
 
The second is a brigantine.
 
The third photograph isn't sufficiently clear to determine what we're looking at.  Unlike the other three photos, which are indisputable, this one's identity depends upon what's happening where the odd, long-sparred jib-headed sail meets the mast. Is it attached to the mast with gaff jaws, or is it crossing the mast as would a lateen antenna.  In the case of the former, it might be called gaff schooner with a weirdly long foresail gaff boom, and in the latter instance, a lateen-rigged ketch with a gaff-rigged mizzen. In the case of a lateen rig, it appears that the picture was taken while the foot of the mainsail antenna was being tacked from one side of the mast to the other. If the long boom is connected to the mast, it may have been a rig adaptation, similar to the arrangement seen on the Thames barges, which accommodated local fishing or cargo handling requirements.
 
The fourth is another staysail schooner.
 
The rest of you guys... That was pathetic. Go to your rooms!!!     
 
Thames barge:
 
 

Excellent point! It addresses a shortcoming of internet forums: Everybody has a soapbox, but some have a lot more to say than others do.  Forums are like good restaurants: Once they are discovered, they often tend to begin to decline in quality. The reason there are so many highly accomplished and experienced modelers on this forum, aside from its association with the Nautical Research Guild, is because they seek out each other and the rest of us are lucky to be able to look over their shoulders. They are here and make MSW what it is because this is where they can continue to learn from those who are playing the game at their level.  When a forum becomes inundated with "newbies," the "level of play" naturally drops and the "high achievers" find it increasingly less worth their while and drift off.
 
Learning is an exercise best done with the eyes open and the mouth closed, (although in my case clearly more so of the former than the latter.) The most useful learning tool of all it the search engine. Notwithstanding that most of the forum platform software packaged search engines are disappointing in the performance when compared with stand-alone search engines such as Google and Bing, they still remain the best way to look up something specific within a given forum. Given the size and age of MSW forum, there is a very high likelihood that most any question one might encounter in the course of building a ship model, excepting really esoteric historical minutia, will have been addressed, often at length, before. It's poor internet forum manners to ask others to answer a question before having exhausted your own efforts to find the answer on your own. Don't expect others to become your "information codependents." Everybody soon tires of a forum that requires hours of wasted time "separating the fly poop from the pepper" (like that other ship modeling forum we all know.) The very basic questions "newbies" ask over and over again have all been asked before. While I encourage and welcome beginners, I must confess that I rarely am moved to devote my time to answering a question they could have found themselves using the search engine.
 
To the original poster who bemoaned the lack of responses to his build log, and to the management of the forum which encourages "build logging" and "newbies" to the hobby (and we all should,) I express my sympathy. On the one hand, build logs are a valuable feature of the forum, if not its heart and soul, but on the other hand, the "build logger" has to understand that he is competing with all the other build logs for attention and it's a jungle out there. If you are new to the hobby and are posting the seventeenth active build log of a popular kit model, your build log isn't going to generate the same amount of interest as the scratch-built masterpiece of one of the published "Superstars of Ship Modeling." I'm not knocking kits by a long shot, but they are ship modeling's "gateway drug." There is an inevitable progression, at rates varying as to the individual, from building kits to "The Dark Side" of scratch-building. No two ways about it, there is far more to learn from following the scratch-build of a never-before- modeled prototype. Don't feel discouraged starting out. Learning to crawl is just as much an accomplishment as learning to walk. 

"Channel surfing" last night, I stumbled upon a gold mine of professionally produced instructional videos on a wide range of topics including woodworking and jewelry making. These are being offered on an apparently new "craft network" called Bluprint TV. Because of the Covid-19 "lockdowns," my cable provider (Comcast Xfinity X1) and probably others, are offering free premium pay channels for a limited time (at present, at least until 40-9-20. )(I found Bluprint by saying "free to me" into my voice-controlled remote control.)
 
On Bluprint, I found a "jewelry" subsection and in there I found two really good streaming video series on soldering jewelry. They are directly applicable to soldering ship model parts, of course. One, Solder Smarter: Strategies for Better Results featuring a jewelry maker named Joanna Gollberg, runs perhaps two hours (I didn't keep track) and begins with an complete instruction on the use of the Smith Little Torch and all the basic techniques of soldering. I'd considered myself a fairly competent solderer after doing it for well over fifty years, but I found myself continuously learning one new thing after another in this online course. 
 
These Bluprint instructional courses are head and shoulders above anything on YouTube, as far as "how-to-do-it" videos go. These are real professional level courses with competent teachers and high production values. Bluprint also has other more advanced courses on soldering, jewelers' metalworking, and even on the proper uses of flex-shaft tools.  I figure I'll be spending the next few evenings going through them while I "shelter in place."
 
They are also currently available free as streaming videos at https://shop.mybluprint.com/jewelry/classes/solder-smarter-strategies-for-better-results/40550 .
 
https://shop.mybluprint.com/jewelry/classes/soldering-success-in-every-scenario/58346
 
https://shop.mybluprint.com/jewelry/classes/metalsmithing-at-home/35434
 
https://shop.mybluprint.com/jewelry/classes/getting-started-with-the-flex-shaft/40629
 

Let's call a spade a spade. The search engine feature of the MSW forum platform is inadequate to address the complexity of the forum's content as well as one would expect based on experience with much more sophisticated search engines like Google, etc. (The development of these "AI-heavy" search engines is driven by their great profitability as "data mining" platforms.) This is true of most every forum search engine I've ever used.
 
There is a "hack" for this problem, however. The trick is to search the MSW forum using a more powerful search engine than the MSW one.
 
The problem:
 
For example, "drifter steam capstan," using the quotations marks to indicate the full phrase, entered in the MSW search engine yields "There were no results for your search."  Entering drifter steam capstan as separate words in the MSW search engine gets you the same "no results" response. Entering "steam capstan" will get you a fair number of results for the use of the term in the forum. Entering steam capstan as separate words rather than a phrase yields three pages of results for steam, steamer, steamboat, and capstan.
 
The hack:
 
Go to a search engine like Google and enter a search for your terms occurring in the MSW forum in the following manner:
 
"drifter steam capstan" + Modelshipworld
 
Google will tell you that there's no result found for the phrase drifter steam capstan in MSW, but it will alternately provide you with "results for drifter steam capstan + Modelshiipworld" (no quotation marks.) You can review those results and, by reading their website sources, see a much more focused set of results than the MSW forum search engine provides. 
 
The first result is:
The next is:
From all indications, these two results are as close as one can get and quickly accessible without wading through useless results
 
 

Excellent point! It addresses a shortcoming of internet forums: Everybody has a soapbox, but some have a lot more to say than others do.  Forums are like good restaurants: Once they are discovered, they often tend to begin to decline in quality. The reason there are so many highly accomplished and experienced modelers on this forum, aside from its association with the Nautical Research Guild, is because they seek out each other and the rest of us are lucky to be able to look over their shoulders. They are here and make MSW what it is because this is where they can continue to learn from those who are playing the game at their level.  When a forum becomes inundated with "newbies," the "level of play" naturally drops and the "high achievers" find it increasingly less worth their while and drift off.
 
Learning is an exercise best done with the eyes open and the mouth closed, (although in my case clearly more so of the former than the latter.) The most useful learning tool of all it the search engine. Notwithstanding that most of the forum platform software packaged search engines are disappointing in the performance when compared with stand-alone search engines such as Google and Bing, they still remain the best way to look up something specific within a given forum. Given the size and age of MSW forum, there is a very high likelihood that most any question one might encounter in the course of building a ship model, excepting really esoteric historical minutia, will have been addressed, often at length, before. It's poor internet forum manners to ask others to answer a question before having exhausted your own efforts to find the answer on your own. Don't expect others to become your "information codependents." Everybody soon tires of a forum that requires hours of wasted time "separating the fly poop from the pepper" (like that other ship modeling forum we all know.) The very basic questions "newbies" ask over and over again have all been asked before. While I encourage and welcome beginners, I must confess that I rarely am moved to devote my time to answering a question they could have found themselves using the search engine.
 
To the original poster who bemoaned the lack of responses to his build log, and to the management of the forum which encourages "build logging" and "newbies" to the hobby (and we all should,) I express my sympathy. On the one hand, build logs are a valuable feature of the forum, if not its heart and soul, but on the other hand, the "build logger" has to understand that he is competing with all the other build logs for attention and it's a jungle out there. If you are new to the hobby and are posting the seventeenth active build log of a popular kit model, your build log isn't going to generate the same amount of interest as the scratch-built masterpiece of one of the published "Superstars of Ship Modeling." I'm not knocking kits by a long shot, but they are ship modeling's "gateway drug." There is an inevitable progression, at rates varying as to the individual, from building kits to "The Dark Side" of scratch-building. No two ways about it, there is far more to learn from following the scratch-build of a never-before- modeled prototype. Don't feel discouraged starting out. Learning to crawl is just as much an accomplishment as learning to walk. 

One more thing for the newer members I have said before.  This is a world wide forum with people of all skill levels.  We literally have some of the best modelers in the world post regularly here.  People who literally wrote the books on our subjects.  Sort of a basketball forum with Lebron posting daily or a swimming forum where Phelps is all over the place.  Sometimes this is pretty intimidating.  Us mere mortals must always remember everyone starts somewhere and we all want to improve.  Some of those "pros" are the nicest and most helpful people here.  The tone and encouragement from everyone here on the forum makes this the best place to be

Hello John, others have given you a lot of good advice about your concerns and it's easy to see just how helpful the forum members are here on MSW. I read the forum for several years before I finally took the plunge and actually began participating and, even then, it took some coaxing from others before I finally opened a build log on my Medway Longboat half way through the build.
 
 It was a great experience to not only share what I was doing, mistakes and all, but also to get lots of positive feedback which kept me motivated. I had never done any rigging before and I was hesitant to start it since it seemed so complicated. I received a lot of good advice and encouragement and it ended up being my favorite part of the build.
 
Of course, most of the interactions I had at that time were with other Medway Longboat builders but I also posted questions about rigging and various techniques etc in other forum areas specific to certain topics. I got lots of good advice that way also. I'm always appreciative of the advice and complements I get and I enjoy letting others know how appreciative I am. Like Chuck has mentioned, it's a back and forth thing and, before you know it, you've made friends while learning a lot and being complimentary in the process.
 
My problem now is that I seem to spend more time reading and posting than I do working on my current build! 
 
Good luck on your build and remember to take it slow and enjoy the journey...

All,
I really appreciate the advice. 
 I get it, although it is somewhat intimidating to insert my humble opinions into topics when I have so little experience.  I guess I was somewhat spoiled since when I posted on some issues outside of my build log, e.g.
Edge of Deck Plank Layout: Spirketting, Waterway, Margin Plank
  I got responses fairly quickly.  And in fact, after I updated my build log, I saw another LN build log.  The last post in there, by Shickluna Searcher was reaching out for help and I posted the following:
Posted October 10 Searcher,
 
I'm in the same (no pun intended) boat, the Lady Nelson.  And I had the same issues you had with the first planking.  I was pointed to the definitive site videos  here: https://modelshipworld.com/forum/98-planking-downloads-and-tutorials-and-videos/ .  The key one is the 3rd I think, where Chuck shows how to edge-bend the planks.  It puts a curve into the plank that when bent in the normal sense, it lays right on top of the forward bulkheads.  Yeah, I also followed Leon, but after 5 x planks, I reached for help from the wizards around here.  They convinced me to start over, which I did.  I left the 1st plank on and edge-bent the rest of them.  And we will likely need to do the same for the 2nd planking.
 
I would also recommend that you go through Chuck's build of the Cheerful, which is close to the LN.  You can find that here: https://syrenshipmodelcompany.com/revenue-cutter-cheerful-1806.php.  There is a PDF for each chapter.
 
I'm just a little bit ahead of you in the build and you can check out my log.  I would recommend that you create your own log so you can post your own questions and not be lumped in with whadozer's log.
 
Good luck...John
 
(Still haven't figured out how to copy between topics.)
 
Believe me Glenn, your log is the go-to log for me when I hit a snag.
 
I probably spend several hours everyday scouring different areas of this forum and others and usually I see things that click.
 
Again, thank you all for the advice.  I'm trying to be a good community person; will just try to be better.  And now to review the comments I got on my last log post.  Thanks Glenn.
 
John

T bought a Harbor Freight one drum tumbler some time ago.  With the $20 off coupon it was economical.  Still in its box and stored on a shelf.  I have it in mind to find a way to add a dowel thru the central axis and that does not turn and has four flaps of sand paper.  It would be fixed flappers and moving perimeter,  My usual armchair experiment mode has me wondering just vertical or near vertical flappers should be the thing.  The end sections would need trauma to fit the dowel.  I wonder if something like an empty can of Dole's not from concentrate Pineapple juice would fit as a drum?  (The from concentrate stuff is vile.) 

No matter the model, one of the best pieces of advice given above is study the planking tutorials.  There are many ways to incorrectly plank the model, but only a few ways that will yield excellent  results.  You will see that there is no need for pins or nails at all.  At a scale of 1:64, the treenails (best if made of bamboo or some other wood, not metal) would only be about 0.015 to 0.017" diameter thus very difficult to make and to see no matter the material.   
 
Looking forward to stopping in on your build log!
 
Allan

If so, they'r'e taking a big chance, since the headstay is the most important, and most highly stressed, piece of standing rigging on the boat. The last place you want to screw in an eyebolt is the end-grain of the stem! It's a real invitation to rot in the fastener hole and the threads have little holding power in end-grain. One of the interesting features of these rather primitive, or should we say "basic," boats is how simply they are built and rigged. Their owners didn't have much to work with, but they found ways to do what needed to be done with simple elegance.